Alienation: Feelings of separation from others or from
meaningful activity; confusion about life and the future.

Allies: The four major opponents of Germany in World War
II: France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States.

Anti-Semitism: Prejudice against Jews; dislike of Jews;
discrimination or persecution of Jews.

Appel: Roll call in the camps.

Appelplatz: Roll call area in concentration, labor and
death camps.

Armistice: Peace; calling a halt to armed hostilities.

Aryan: Has no biological validity as a racial term. Used
by the Nazis to mean a superior,white, Nordic heroic type.

Auschwitz: Auschwitz I. The first of the three camps that
made up the Auschwitz-Birkenau-Monowitz camp complex. Used as prisoner of
war and concentration camp.

Beer-hall Putsch: The event that took place in Munich,
Germany, in 1923 when Hitler led an attempt to seize the government (a putsch).
The putsch failed and resulted in a jail sentence for him and a lesson that
in order to gain power he would have to work within the system.

Belzec: Death camp located in Poland. Jews were murdered
in gas chambers as carbon monoxide gas from an engine was pumped in. An
estimated 500,000 Jews were killed there.

Bergen-Belsen: Concentration camp in Germany. After the
death and labor camps in the East were taken apart, thousands of the emaciated
prisoners were forced into Bergen-Belsen.

Bermuda Conference on Refugees: Anglo-American Conference
held in Bermuda, April 1943, to decide what to do about those in flight
from the Nazis, especially Jews. The conference produced no plan and revealed
the indifference of Allied governments.

Birkenau: Auschwitz II, the death camp and site of the
four gas chambers in which Jews and others were killed.

Brezhinka: The storehouse of clothing collected from the
victims at Auschwitz. The mountain of clothing was sorted by prisoners for
suitable things to send back to Germany. Also known as "Kanada" by some of the prisoners

Buchenwald: One of the first concentration camps in Germany.
Located near Weimar, the cultural capital of 18th and 19 century Germany,
it was built around the “Goethe Oak,” the tree beneath which
the great German Enlightenment poet, Wolfgang Goethe, sat and wrote.

Bund: Jewish political organization in Poland which was
represented in the Polish parliament.

Castration: Surgical removal of the testicles or genitals.

Chelmno: The first death camp, located in Poland, constructed
in 1941 for the purpose of murdering Jews. The victims of Chelmno died in
gas vans and where buried in mass graves. An estimated 100,000 Jews were
murdered there.

Collective Responsibility: The act of holding a group
responsible for the actions of any of its individual members.

Concentration Camp: Place in which prisoners of the state
are kept. In Germany, concentration camps began as an instrument of intimidation
for political opponents of the Nazis and because the prisons were full.
Later, they became a standing weapon of terror. Ultimately, over 100 camps
were set up where people were “concentrated,” that is kept in
one place. While they were related to the labor and death camps, they were
not the same. Most recent estimates suggest between one and two million
people died in them, but they were not set up as death camps like Treblinka,
Sobibor and Auschwitz II (Birkenau). Auschwitz I was the concentration camp
of the Auschwitz complex.

Crematorium: Ovens or furnaces where concentration and
death camp prisoners’ bodies were burned.

Dachau: The first concentration camp opened by the Nazis
in 1933 near Munich, Germany. It served as a camp to concentrate political
opponents of the Third Reich, democratic supports of the Weimar Republic,
Socialists, Communists and others who were mainly non-Jews.

Death Camps: These camps were Nazi centers of murder or
extermination. Jews and non-Jews were brought to them to be put to death
as part of Hitler’s “Final Solution.” The six death camps
(Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Maidanek, Chelmno and Belzec) were established
solely for the murder of Europe’s Jews. Eventually, had the war continued,
they would have been used to annihilate other groups the Nazis considered
inferior, like the Poles. Most recent estimates regarding numbers of Gypsies
killed in death camps are about 30,000. The total number of Gypsies killed
by the Nazis is between 250,000 and 500,000.

Death Marches: The prisoners of Auschwitz and other camps
in Poland were forced by the Germans to march to camps in Germany as the
Russian armies approached from the east. The death camps were taken apart
and the prisoners were forced into the roads in the bitter January cold
of 1945. Most recent estimates suggest between 50% and 60% of the victims
died.

Deportation: Term used for the forced removal of Jews
in Nazi occupied lands under the pretense of “resettlement.”
Most Jews were shipped to the death camps.

Displaced Persons: Term used to refer to those survivors
of the Holocaust who had no homes after the war and were often placed in
Displaced Persons Camps.

Displaced Persons Camps: Several camps established after
the war for the purpose of housing Diplaced Persons. Also known as DP camps.

Dolchstosslegende: The myth of the “stab in the
back” used by the Nazis and other opponents of the democratic Weimar
Republic. These people claimed that Germany had lost World War I because
the Jews and Communists had plotted against Germany from within.

Dysentery: An infectious disease which produces diarrhea
which becomes uncontrollable and often leads to internal bleeding and ulcer
and stomach complications. The people in the ghettos and camps were constantly
battling the infection of dysentery.

Einsatzgruppen: SS mobile killing units, attached to German
Army, whose primary purpose was to seek out and slaughter Jews in Eastern
Poland and Russia.

Euthanasia: The policy of so-called “mercy-killing”
which the Nazi government passed into law in 1933. Their plans were to kill
the “feeble-minded,” old, physically handicapped or “useless”
people in Germany. The “Euthanasia Program” became the foundation
for the planning of the “Final Solution.” The plans for killing
the Jews included practices similar to those used in the “Euthanasia
Program.” The “Final Solution” also used many of the same
staff.

Extermination: Term used to refer to the annihilation
or total destruction of the Jews. Extermination calls up images of pests
or non-human creatures to be killed by use of pesticides.

Extermination Camps: Six camps established in Poland for
the purpose of killing Jews–Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, Maidanek,
Chelmno and Belzec.

Fascism: An extreme conservative political philosophy,
usually ultra-nationalistic, violent, anti-Communist, anti-Semitic or racist.
German fascism was National Socialism or Nazism.

Final Solution: The Nazi term for their program to annihilate
the Jews of Europe. A euphemism or substitute term for mass murder or genocide.
The term refers to the last in
a line of “solutions” to the “problem” of what to
do with the Jews.

Freikorps: Bands of armed fighters who roamed the streets
of German in the 1920s as violent defenders of right-wing political ideas
and parties. The Nazi SA was formed from
one of these groups.

Fuehrer: German word for leader. Hitler was called the
Fuehrer, meaning the supreme leader of his people. The term implies great
prestige and power.

Gas Chamber: Buildings or parts of buildings which were
sealed off and air tight so that large numbers of people could be murdered
by poison gas which was released into the
chamber. The primary method of murder used in the death camps.

Generalkomissar: Nazi SS commander of an occupied region.

Genocide: The systematic killing of a whole people or
nation.

Gestapo: Abbreviation for Geheime Staatspolizei or Secret
State Police. The Gestapo was a branch of the SS which dealt with political
opponents with terror and arbitrary
arrest. In 1939, the Gestapo took control of Jewish emigration, which meant
it was in charge of expelling Jews from all German-controlled areas.

Ghetto: The section of a city in which Jews were required
to live. Ghettos were established in cities with railroad connections. The
ghettos were sometimes surrounded by guards, barbed wire or brick walls.
If Jews were found outside the ghetto without special permission they were
killed.

Paul Joseph Goebbels: Nazi in charge of propaganda. He
was a master of mass media techniques. His speech on the night of November
9, 1938, touched off the Kristallnacht.

Hermann Goering: Deputy Chancellor to Hitler, also in
charge of the air force and gave the order to Heydrich to begin the “Final
Solution.”

Wolfgang Goethe: Most famous 18th century German Enlightenment
poet and philosopher who represented tolerance, reason, international peace
and the great ideas of the time. He was the model German for German Jews.

Gypsies: A group designated by the Nazis as “parasites”
and criminals. The Criminal Police and the SS were instructed to arrest
any persons who “looked like” Gypsies or were wanderers in a
“Gypsie-like” manner. There were some racial theorists who thought
Gypsies were somehow of the same “race" as Jews. Most of the Nazi
official saw them as criminal rather than racial enemies. A series of laws
like the Nuremberg Laws was drafted for Gypsies. It is estimated that between
250,000 and 500,000 Gypsies were murdered by the Nazis, many of estimated
30,000 killed in death camps were at Auschwitz.

Reinhard Heydrich: Head of the Main Office of the SS;
he coordinated the many departments necessary to carry out the “Final
Solution.” Heydrich was a brilliant organizer and vicious anti-Semite.
He was Heinrich Himmler’s assistant.

Hippocratic Oath: The oath taken by all doctors in which
they swear to heal the sick and not harm any human beings.

Holocaust: The term which refers to the systematic murder
of approximately six million Jews between 1933 and 1945. The word is a Greek
translation of a word used in the Book of Genesis in the Bible which means
“total burning” and refers to a sacrifice to God.

I. G. Farben: German industrial trust which was the largest
chemical conglomerate, controlling company, in Europe. It included corporations
like BASF, German Bayer, and numerous others. I. G. Farben used Jewish slave
laborers from concentration and labor \ camps, financed medical experiments,
and even constructed its own labor camp at Auschwitz (Auschwitz III, Monowitz)
where the largest synthetic rubber factory was being built.

Jewish Question: The term refers to anti-Semitic question
of “what to do with the Jews.” The policies followed under the
Nazis included three answers: separation from the rest of German society,
expulsion and, finally, annihilation – the “Final Solution to
the Jewish Question.”

Juden: German word for Jews.

Judenrat: Jewish Council: administrative organizations
set up in each ghetto by the German occupation forces to organize and administer
the ghettos.

Judenrein: German term meaning “pure” or “clean”
of Jews. The goal of the Nazi “Final Solution” or the Holocaust.

Kapo: Abbreviation for Kameraden Polizei or “Comrade
Police.” Kapos were prisoners, Jewish and non-Jewish, who were selected
by German guards to oversee labor details in their barracks in the concentration
and labor camps. They frequently became as violent or more violent than
the Germans. Had they acted less violently, they would have been murdered,
too.

Kristallnacht: “Night of the broken glass.”
Using the shooting of a minor German official in Paris, Ernst vom Rath,
by a young Jewish Student, the Nazis, organized and led by SA men all over
Germany, carried out three nights of violence against Jews, Jewish homes,
synagogues and businesses. The Nazis smashed, burned and looted. Over 26,000
Jews were arrested and taken into “Protective Custody” and sent
to concentration camps for days or weeks; many were beaten in the streets;
about 35 were killed. This was the last pogrom in Germany, and it took place
on November 9-11, 1938. Among the results were the enormous claims filed
by Germans against German insurance companies; openly hostile publicity
from foreign reporters who observed the anti-Jewish riots; protests from
foreign ministries – including the United States. President Roosevelt
temporarily withdrew the American Ambassador to Germany. The Jews were charged
a billion mark penalty to pay for the damages and the event was followed
by a series of anti-Jewish laws.

Labor Camp: A camp whose prisoners were used for slave
labor by German businesses, SS, the government or the military.

Landsberg: A labor camp in Germany which was liberated
by the American forces in 1945. It became a Displaced Persons Camp.

Lebensraum: German word for “living space.”
Hitler’s goal in the war was to gain Lebensraum for Germans in the
East. This meant enslaving or killing the native populations of Poland and
other Eastern European countries.

Left-wing (political): Political groups or individuals
that were liberal in their outlook; advocating democracy, equal rights for
all citizens, tolerance and peace between nations.

Gotthold Lessing: An 18th century German Enlightenment
philosopher and writer who championed reason, tolerance, equal rights and
peace. He wrote a famous play about a wise Jew called “Nathan the
Wise” which became famous in Germany. He was a close friend of Moses
Mendelssohn, the German Jewish philosopher.

Maidanek: Death and concentration camp in Poland where
an estimated 200,000 Jews and 30,000 Polish non-Jews were killed in gas
chambers.

Mauthausen: Concentration and labor camp located in Austria.
Although not designated as a death camp, recent estimates suggest that between
50,000 and 100,000 Jews and non-Jews were killed there in the Nazi program
of “extermination through labor.”

Moses Mendelssohn: An 18th century German Enlightenment
philosopher and writer and close friend of the famous Gotthold Lessing.
He became known as “the first German Jew” because he assumed
the role of both German and Jew by writing in German, dressing like the
Germans and discussing German issues. Yet, he maintained his Jewish identity
as well. This attitude was known as assimilation and served as a model for
German Jews who came after him.

Monowitz: The I.G. Farben labor camp at Auschwitz (Auschwitz
III).

Nationalism: Devotion to one’s nation; excessive
patriotism; the doctrine that national interests are more important than
anything else.

National Socialism: The political and social philosophy
of Hitler and of Germany from 1933-1945. National Socialism meant dictatorship
and included the philosophy of racism as its rationale. German fascism was
called National Socialism.

National Socialist Bond: Dutch Nazi Party.

Nazi: Abbreviation for National Socialist German Workers
Party (NSDAP).

Nazi Party: The National Socialist German Worker's Party
(NSDAP). Founded in 1919 as the German Worker's Party (DAP). One of many
anti-Semitic, anti-Republican poltical parties that were established at
the time. Changed its name to the National Socialist Worker's Party in 1920.

Nazi-Soviet Pact: The agreement between the Soviet Union
and Germany signed on August 30, 1939. The two countries agreed to divide
Poland when Germany conquered it and also agreed to remain neutral should
either be involved in war.

Nazism: Abbreviation for National Socialism, the political
philosophy and system of government under Hitler in Germany from 1933-1945.
In practice, it meant dictatorship or total control by Hitler

Nuremberg Laws: In 1935, Hitler made anti-Semitism part
of Germany’s legal code. These laws defined Jews, excluded Jews from
German society, and removed all their civil rights.

Nuremberg Trials: Trials conducted after World War II
by an International Military Tribunal set up by the Allies. High ranking
Nazi leaders were charged with War Crimes and “Crimes Against Humanity.”
Twenty-one were charged; 19 were convicted; 12 received the death penalty.

Partisan: Native guerilla-type fighters who resisted the
Nazi invasion after their countries were defeated.

Perpetrator: A participant in the killing of the Jews.
This term includes all those who were involved even from far away: bureaucrats,
lawyers, architects, chemists, businessmen, railroad officials, diplomats,
etc.

Pogrom: An attack on Jews by mobs of non-Jews. These attacks
were violent, including rape, murder and the looting and destruction of
Jewish property. Jews suffered from \ pogroms for centuries. Whole communities
were violently and viciously destroyed. Pogroms usually lasted for a short
time—hours to days—and then were over. Jews would return and
begin again. Pogroms were not systematic, organized or continuous; they
were not what historian Raul Hilberg has called a “destruction process”
which is carried out administratively and continues until it achieves its
final goal: in this case, the annihilation of the Jews. The Holocaust was
not the same as a pogrom.

Pope: The spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Church;
also the Bishop of Rome and the political authority of Vatican City.

Protocols of the Elders of Zion: An anti-Semitic book
written near the end of the 19th century. It was a proven forgery which
claimed that there was an international Jewish conspiracy to take over the
world and destroy “pure” “Aryan” Christian civilization.
The book was financed in the U.S. by Henry Ford. It was one of the best
selling books in Europe in the 1920s.

Propaganda: The systematic spreading of particular ideas,
doctrines or policies, usually through the mass media, to advance a particular
cause or person.

Racism: A philosophy or program of discrimination, segregation,
persecution based on the idea of one race being superior to others. Modern
scientists consider the concept of “race” to be a false one.
The Nazis considered the “Aryan Race,” Germanic and Christian,
to be destined to rule the world because of its “blood superiority.”
They considered Jews a race of inferior and undesirable sub-humans. They
had similar views of Gypsies, Poles, Blacks and Slavs.

Ravensbruck: A concentration camp located in Germany.
It held only women prisoners.

Red Army: The army of the Soviet Union.

Refugee: Someone who has lost or been driven from his/her
home and is homeless.

Reparations: Payments made by Germany to the Allies (Great
Britain, France and the United States) after World War I.

Right-wing (political): Individuals or political parties
that were nationalistic, conservative, usually anti-democratic. In Germany,
these groups were often connected with anti-Semitic tendencies.

SA: Abbreviation for Sturm Abteilung, the Storm Section
or Storm Troopers. The SA were the brown-shirted units organized to protect
the early Nazi meetings and terrorize those who opposed Hitler. Their membership
grew to 400,000 by 1930. They were known as the violent street fighters
of the Nazi Party. Hitler had hundreds of the SA leadership murdered in
June 1934 because they were hurting his prestige as Chancellor of Germany
with their ineffective and crude violence. The SS was originally a part
of the SA but was separated from it in 1936.

Scapegoat: A person or group who is the object of hatred
and even violence in a situation where prejudiced people must place blame
for their mistakes or actions on others.

Selection: The procedure to determine who would live and
who would die at death and labor camps. The most famous of these was Auschwitz.
The selections were usually carried out or directed by medical doctors who
were considered professionally qualified to make the decisions.

SD: Abbreviation for the Security
Police (Sicherheitsdienst), the branch of the SS that was the secret
service with the job protecting national security. The SD was involved
with running he death camps and was the branch of the SS that contained
the Einsatzgruppen, or mobile killing units. SS:

Sobibor: Death camp in Poland. An estimated 250,000 Jews
died there in gas chambers. In 1943 Sobibor was blown up by prisoners who
then escaped. Most were caught and killed.

Sonderkommando: Special units of prisoners given the
duty of transporting bodies from the gas chambers to the crematoria and
cleaning out the crematoria ovens. Each unit lasted a few months and was
then killed.

Special Treatment (Sonderbehandlung): The term used in
the concentration and death camps as a euphemism, a substitute word which
hides the real meaning, for killing. “Special Treatment” meant
gassing.

SS: Abbreviation for Schutzstaffel or protection squads.
Originally a part of the SA, they were picked as the elite guard to watch
over Hitler. Their numbers grew from 200 to 4 million by 1940. Headed by
Heinrich Himmler, they became known as the most efficient organization in
the Third Reich. Eventually, the enormous SS bureaucracy was like a state
within the state. It controlled the concentration, labor and death camps. It
included an armed section who fought as crack troops in the war, a secret
service unit, the Gestapo or secret police; and it controlled almost every
aspect of the “Final Solution.” SS men were trained to hate all “enemies of
the Reich,” especially Jews. (See
Appendix C)

Josef Stalin: Leader of the Soviet Union from 1924-1953.
He signed the infamous Nazi-Soviet Pact with Hitler in August 1939 which
made the invasion of Poland possible. After the German invasion of the Soviet
Union in June 1941, Stalin led his people to victory as one of the Allied
powers in World War II.

Stereotype: A fixed image or idea of a person or group.
Stereotypes place characteristics observed in a few members of a group onto
the whole group.

Sudetenland: Western Czechoslovakia which was given to
Germany in 1938 without consulting with the Czech government. England and
France, with the help of Italy, negotiated the agreement with Hitler. Within
months of this, Hitler had his army move into the rest of Czechoslovakia.

Swastika: An ancient symbol often used in Eastern religions
as a symbol of life. In 1920, it was taken by the Nazi Party as its symbol.
A twisted cross, it came to represent all the evils of Nazism.

Theresienstadt: Concentration camp established in Czechoslovakia
as a “model camp” to be shown to outside visitors from neutral
countries like Switzerland or Sweden or members of the Red Cross. Almost
all the Jews who were sent there, including thousands of children, were
sent to Auschwitz and killed.

Third Reich: The Third Empire; Hitler’s name for
his Germany and its administration from 1933-1945. The term comes from the
First Empire of the Roman emperors, the Second of German Chancellor Bismarck
in the 19th century, and the Third, Hitler’s. Hitler thus saw himself
as in the tradition of the Roman conquerors of Europe.

Treaty of Versailles: One of the treaties signed to end
World War I. The Versailles Treaty stripped Germany of much land, forced
the government to pay reparations to the Allies and accused Germany of responsibility
for World War I.

Treblinka: Death camp in Poland. In its one year of existence
an estimated 850,000 Jews were murdered there in gas chambers. In 1943,
the camp was blown up in an uprising by the remaining 600 prisoners. All
but 40 were killed.

Tuberculosis: An infectious
disease which usually attacks the lungs.

Typhus: An infectious disease which causes rash, high
fever, delirium and joint pain. The disease is carried by lice or fleas
and reached epidemic proportions in the ghettos and camps.

Uebermenschen: Nazi term for “supermen” which
to them was a racial idea. They hoped to create a race of biologically “pure”
supermen.

Underground: The secret groups fighting the Nazi occupation.
The term includes the resistance movements in each country under Nazi rule
during World War II.

Vatican: The central authority for the Catholic Church;
the authority and government of the pope. “Vatican” also refers
to the residence of the pope in Vatican City.

Volk: German word for “people” or nation.
The term has a strongly nationalistic and even racial implication.

Volksgemeinschaft: German word meaning “national
community.” It implies a family- like unity and some genetic bond
between its members that is almost mystical.

War Refugee Board: Agency established by President Roosevelt
in 1944 after much urging by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau
and members of the Treasury Department. It was established to negotiate
the relief or rescue of war refugees, especially Jews.

Wehrmacht: The German Army (as distinguished from the
SS).

Weimar Republic: The German government from 1919-1934.
Its constitution was drafted in the city of Weimar, the poet Wolfgang Goethe’s
home and the 18th century cultural capital of Germany. The Republic’s
political center was in Berlin. A democratic republic like the United States,
it was burdened with the aftermath of World War I, terrible inflation, violent
enemies within like the Nazi Party, and an army that was not committed to
defending a democracy. When Hitler combined the offices of Chancellor and
President, in August 1934, the Weimar Republic came to an end.

World Jewish Congress: Agency founded to coordinate different
Jewish organizations. During the war, it worked to help the Jews of Europe
from its offices in Switzerland.

Yom Kippur: The Jewish Day of Atonement; the holiest day
of the year for Jews on which they traditionally fast for 24 hours.

Zegota: Polish group connected to the underground resistance
movement against the Nazis. Led by Colonel Henryk Wolinski and Adolf Berman,
this group devoted itself to the rescue of Jews in Warsaw and Kracow.
They managed to save 4,000-6,000 Jews.

Zyklon B: The cyanide gas made of prussic acid which was
used to kill Jews in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. (The other death camps
used carbon monoxide gas.) The gas was produced by a company called DEGESCH
that was partly owned by I.G. Farben.